Paul DeLine:  

If you knew/remember me I hope it was a favorable experience. I feel I made many good friendships in my life but not many lasting. If you'd like to know more please read on, and if you'd like to touch base let me know. Well, it all started on June 29, 1961 in the small city of Watertown, New York. There I spent the first nine years of my youth enjoying the long, hot summers and cold, snowy winters. Then in April of 1970 we learned that my father, who had enlisted in the Army three years prior and had already served two tours in Viet Nam, received orders for a three year tour in Germany and we'd be moving. I remember being excited about traveling to a foreign land and my first airplane ride. The next three years would turn out to be very eventful. About a month after we arrived in Ansbach, Germany, a relatively small city in southern Germany, my father and I took an overnight train trip to Bremerhaven, in the northern tip of Germany, to pick up our car which had been shipped via ocean freight. We then proceeded to navigate our eight hour journey along Germany's autobahns back home. The school system provided many field trips to castles, palaces, and museums to really enhance our cultural and historical education. One our first family sightseeing trips took us on a two-day tour of Salzburg, Austria in the spring of '71. During the summer of '71, I spent most of the time in some sort of medical recuperation. The first was after plastic surgery on my ears, shortly thereafter I fell out of a tree and broke my wrist, then after the cast came off I was back in the hospital for corrective eye surgery. I think it was also sometime in '71 that my father gave us our first dog, a collie named Mandy. An opportunity then arose in February '72 to go skiing for a week with our sister German school, which happened to be a girl's school, in the Austrian Alps. During the summer that year, we took a week and traveled around the Black Forest area of Germany. The local youth center also provided much recreation; dances, organized sports (I learned to bowl in the kid's league), trips to a roller rink in Erlangen at another Army installation. After three rewarding years, my father's next reassignment would take us to Ft. Lewis outside of Tacoma, Washington. But before we arrived there, thirty days or so would be used to visit family and make the cross-country journey. During our time at home, my sister and I stayed with our aunt/uncle/8 cousins at their dairy farm. While there we helped with farm chores; feeding/milking cows, bailing/bringing in hay from the fields, etc. For me this was a blast and really enjoyed it. I also experienced my first stock car race and McDonald's hamburger thanks to my older cousins. After all the visits and preparations made, we hit the road for our expedition west to Ft. Lewis, Washington. Up to this point in my life, the environmental landscapes I'd been exposed to have been rather lush, green and lots of foliage, however as we traveled across Nebraska the landscape made a drastic change. Gone were the trees which led to open fields of wheat then open, dry, barren land with large, picturesque rock formations. The not so funny part about this trip, at the time, is that it took place during mid-summer with two adults, two sub-teens (10/12), and a full grown collie in a small Opel Manta (no A/C). Our first real planned road-trip/tourist stop was the Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska. After that short travel break we moved on to about Ogallala where we started following a bit of the Oregon Trail and headed for Scottsbluff. Next stop on the itinerary was Ft. then on to Yellowstone National Park. Before we toured through the Park, we visited the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and just happened to meet his grandson the day we were there. Unfortunately, during our visit to the Park, Old Faithful was less than faithful. A few more days of travel and we finally reached our destination at the end of July, '73! During our rather short twenty month stay in the area, we did manage to do some travel/sightseeing. These were comprised of weekend jaunts to places like Seattle, Mt. Rainier, and the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, an extended weekend camping trip down to Crater Lake, Oregon and a week long trip to the 1974 World's Fair in Spokane. I also wiggled in a couple Steelhead fishing trips with the school's fishing club. Speaking of school, I enjoyed the short period of time matriculating at Woodbrook Jr. High. Aside from the required classes, which I think I took a pretty active part in, I also learned to play the violin in the orchestra in the seventh grade and had a taste of drama in the eighth grade, which is kind of ironic since I'm not a liberal arts kind of person. Other activities that I managed to squeeze in were; swimming at the post pool/beach, youth center roller skating trips in Lacey, joined the post youth Rifle Club and participated in a match in Seattle, took part in a week long camping trip with the Christian youth group to help renovate a local Salvation Army's Youth Band Camp, and biked in a marathon to raise money for the March of Dimes. I also started taking an active role in preparing the family dinner meals when I was 13 because my mother started taking accounting/bookkeeping classes and it definitely was never my dad¿s forte. This was the beginning of my enjoyment of cooking. Around Christmas '74, my dad received orders sending us back to Germany, Farris Barracks in Erlangen where I had gone roller skating previously, WAHOO! My father left alone in mid February in order to arrange housing for us before we followed him about five weeks later. The trip back across the states was a little hectic on my mother this time since we were on a tight schedule and she was the lone driver. My parents also arranged to leave our dog on the farm as they didn't want to put her through the flying experience again. The few days we were home on the farm, I had the magnanimous opportunity of helping the vet inseminate a cow since my cousins were in school and my uncle was elsewhere. Upon arriving in Germany about mid April '75, we found that my father had procured a relatively new, nice little, 3-bedroom, basement apartment, living below the landlord in a small cow-town, Niederlindach, about nine miles away from the Army facilities. We also learned upon attempting to enroll me in school, that due to the timeframe, the school thought it was unnecessary for me to finish out my eighth-grade year. Up until the end of the school year, by which time our car had been picked up, my mother and I would occasionally catch the school bus with my sister to do whatever was necessary on post. My time was spent hanging out at the library, youth center, and bookstore. On the days we'd stay home, I'd read books, magazines, and explore the little town and surrounding countryside. After school let out for the summer, things started to become more interesting. It began in early June with a youth center day trip to a small city in southern Germany that was celebrating a festival. Then about two weeks later I went on a week long camping trip with other teens down to the Lake Chiemsee recreation area, which is about 45 minutes east of München. It was a somewhat miserable trip as it rained most of the time and our tents weren't exactly waterproof. Another event that took place was the birthing of a calf belonging to our landlord's father who had a small farmstead next door. They also found my previous insemination experience interesting since it only happened a few months earlier. During the summer I also made a few friends in both the American and German communities, the latter being initiated by a couple of 12-year old girls. We hung out (they asked lots of questions), swam in the local farmers' ponds, and they even managed to get me drunk during a week long foosball tourney being held in the town. Well summer came to an end and everybody headed back to school, my sister and I attended Nürnberg American Jr./High School until February '78. During that time, I started working toward a career in architecture with classes in drafting and Spanish. In February of '76 we were able to move into military housing and shortly thereafter, in April, my mother and I took a 3-day trip to Paris over spring break. Since we moved, my sister and I were able to go roller skating more often. I also took a more active roll in the youth center as an assistant to help set up events, running concessions, etc. And I started bowling in the Jr. League again. By the holidays of '76, my sister and I had become better skaters and an opportunity presented itself for us to become volunteers at the roller rink, only the manager was a paid employee, now we could skate for free! A few months later I became the primary DJ. In July of '77, the school Spanish Club planned a week long trip to Costa Del Sol, Spain in which I participated. We hit the beaches during the day and the discotheques at night. We went to a bull fight, a Flamenco Show, and a handful of us planned an evening Paella dinner overlooking the Mediterranean. When I returned from the trip, I received a job offer from the theater manager to do preliminary cleanup after nightly shows in return for free admission. February '78 came around and it was time for our second excursion to Germany to come to an end. Our departure was delayed two days due to a severe snowstorm in the Northeast where we would be landing. This time we were headed for Fort Carson, located just to the south of Colorado Springs, Colorado. One of my first priorities was to obtain my driver's license as soon as possible which I managed to do just before my seventeenth birthday. Just after my birthday, I started work as a H...Expand for more